Feb 24, 2011

A nice interview here from BBC Radio Norfolk who fell hook, line and sinker for a spoof story about the council estate roots of Downing Street cat Larry which also suckered, among others The Daily Mail.

The Media Standards Trust has launched a website aimed at highlighting instances of 'churnalism' - a phrase made popular Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News, which refers to the tendancy among some journalists to cut and paste content from press releases with minimal 'topping and tailing' and little effort to seek independent comment or challenge claims therein.

Called, appropriately enough, Churnalism.com the website will enable visitors to check press releases against more than three million news articles, from national newspapers and the websites of major broadcasters.

Of course, it should be stressed at this point that information has pretty much been taken verbatim from the Media Standards Trust press release. Irony is alive and well.

Visitors to the non-profit website will also apparently be able to see the percentage of any press release cut and pasted into news articles as well as tagging examples of 'churn' for others to see, thus creating a database of 'churnalism', and sharing them via Twitter and Facebook.

Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust said (in a press release emailed to The Media Blog, just to be transparent about just how little thought, research and effort went into this post):

"News organisations can now be much more transparent about the sources of their articles, but most of them still aren't. Hiding the connection between PR and news is not in the interests of the public.

"Hopefully churnalism.com will nudge them to be more open about their use of PR material."

"Maybe churnalism.com will also encourage more original journalism. Exposing unoriginal churn may help slow the steep decline in the amount of original reporting that we've seen in the last few years."

Yesterday, one rather boorish follower - perhaps unaware that you don't have to read people's tweets and can unfollow them at any time - criticsed Boo for retweeting a series of comments from rappers 'Ice T' and '50 Cent' which promoted a film - The Art Of Rap - produced by Boo's husband Paul Toogood:

Feb 21, 2011

Justin Bieber found this week that social media, which has played such a large part in elevating his star since his discovery on YouTube, doesn't just fawn and gush, it also barks and bites.

Following an interview with Rolling Stone, trailed in snippets on the magazine's website, excerpts began to circulate widely which suggested the 16-year-old Beiber is opposed to abortion and thinks "all things happen for a reason", including rape.

Among some other quotes which suggested Bieber is yet to form his own opinions or world view on a number of issues (such as lumping North and South Korea into one country and describing it as "bad"), Bieber told Rolling Stone journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis:

"I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby."

Asked whether that opinion changed in cases where pregnancy is a result of rape, he said:

"Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason."

Rolling Stone later clarified that the full interview includes Bieber caveating this with a rather woolly: "I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

He had already judged of course - certainly as far as many critics were concerned - in the previous sentence when he said "everything happens for a reason". Supported by his anti-abortion rhetoric, that read like the kind of preaching the Christian right in America would love all role-models to peddle to impressionable young minds.

Polarising question

But whatever we may think, individually about Bieber and such opinions, this article raises a number of questions beyond the rights and wrongs of abortion, or other such incendiary issues.

What did the journalist, Grigoriadis really expect to be the outcome of asking such a polarising question of a 16-year-old such as Bieber?

This is not to excuse his opinions. Not least because that would be to assume those even are his opinions.

Bieber is a 16-year-old, born and raised in small-town Canada by his mother, a practising Christian, who according to a New York Times article from 2009, prayed with church elders to determine whether her son should be allowed to follow a mainstream music career rather than enter the church or dedicate his life to Christian music.

Apparently, after getting the nod from her church and overcoming some concerns that the music producer courting her son was not a Christian, Bieber was allowed to travel to Atlanta to record demo tapes, aged just 14. Since then he has travelled the world on a rollercoaster of pop stardom.

It's easy to imagine the world according to Justin Bieber has not been the same one any of us grew up in.

In March last year, shortly after turning 16, Bieber's second album debuted at number one in the US Billboard charts - selling more than two million copies. If he hadn't already worked it out for himself, Bieber will have been told in no uncertain terms that popularity in the US will be the one thing that keeps him in trainers and baseball caps for many years to come.

"Morally wrong"

In 2010, according to figures from Gallup, 50 per cent of Americans said they believe abortion is "morally wrong". Although the volume at which the pro-life lobby campaigns may lead people, such as Bieber, to believe it is even higher.

So asked his views on abortion, put on the spot during an interview for a US pop music magazine where he may have been expecting a more forgiving line of questioning, it's impossible for us to know why Bieber gave the answer he did.

Perhaps it was the inate pressures and beliefs of the Christian upbringing he was born into. Perhaps it was a combination of fear that whatever he said was going to anger 50 per cent of the country, coupled with a commercial awareness - as with career 'virgin' Britney Spears before him - that the Christian right would be a more powerful ally for an aspiring pop star.

It could have been upbringing, commercial savvy, the sheer teenage stupidity of giving an answer, any answer, without thinking about the risks and repurcussions of his words. Or a combination of all three.

A lot of what Bieber said was no doubt ignorant. But does it really further any cause to discover this about him, or any 16-year-old?

Was there really any value, beyond the publicity it has generated - and therein lies the key perhaps to such irresponsible reporting - in asking that question, or following up with such a highly-charged and confrontational question - to a 16-year-old - about rape, which he so clearly tripped over as the awkward, fumbled wording of his caveated answer suggests?

Much of the anger aimed at Bieber has pointed out how inappropriate it is that such ill-informed opinions fell from the mouth of a teenage role model, or that he would even wade into and skew the debate about such a controversial subject matter. But I can't help thinking, on this occasion, it was the question that was even more inappropriate than the answers.

Feb 20, 2011

Think science coverage in the tabloids is a bit of nonsense, jumping from one story to the next with little care about credibility or consistency, simply to fill space? Then you might enjoy these stories, published just 24 hours apart in the Daily Mail:

So that's good news for lovers of red meat then. Or rather it was, until they read this the very next day:

Feb 19, 2011

Luckily for them nobody at the Daily Star actually had to put their name to today's exclusive 'Kate's a real turn-on' story, which informs us that reality TV try-hard Kate Walsh, presenter of the rather overpromising OK! TV on Channel Five (owned by Daily Star proprietor Richard Desmond), 1) Owns a "striking bikini", 2) Is looking forward to meeting some guests on next week's show, 3) Isn't afraid to be shown in said bikini, framed by a few token sentences to the effect that this is somehow newsworthy, if it helps Richard Desmond cross-promote his lowest common denominator media brands.

Even though such staff 'Reporter' bylines are a convention adopted to cover a multitude of sins - from fictitious stories to lazy rewrites of other people's copy and shameless self-promotion - you can't help thinking some poor sub editor probably had to go back and shower a second time this morning when they saw the article online:

A good spot here from the team over at FullFact.org who wonder just how three of the UK's tabloid newspapers could have taken the same piece of information, issued by the World Health Organisation, and conjure up three such completely conflicting stories:

Daily Star: "On average each British drinker annually consumes the equivalent of 75 pints of beer..."

Gosh, 500 pints! Now that sounds a bit more like it... but in for a penny, in for a pound as they say...

Daily Mail: "The average British drinker sinks 1,100 pints of beer each year..."

FullFact.org shares a good breakdown of how the papers may have reached their vastly differing totals (read it here). We'll not spoil which paper is right - or least wrong - suffice to say The Star must have had all 75 pints in one go before getting their Fisher Price 'My First Calculator' out.

You may have noticed a lot of news coming out of the Mobile World Congress technology show in Barcelona this week. It seems the promise of the latest news from the likes of Microsoft, Nokia, RIM and Google - not to mention the chance to get hands-on with some shiny new gadgets - has certainly drawn the great and the good of the world's tech press to Spain.

But not everybody had a guaranteed seat on the bus. Here's one email sent out to a number of PR agencies by a journalist who was looking for somebody, anybody, to sponsor his passage to Catalonia:

"Looking for information about Mobile World Congress 2011. If anyone has a client that would like to meet... at the expo please get in touch - but only if they are willing to pick up the cost of getting me there, the hotel, and getting me back again."

"PARENTS are demanding a Rastafarian mouse is banned from children's telly after claiming it is racist... Mums deluged the BBC with almost 100 complaints demanding that the show is axed as it might offend black viewers."

That's really not very many complaints, though the Star's newfound cultural sensitivity is to be applauded. Though the word "might" suggests The Star hasn't gone to the most rigorous lengths to understand the degree to which Rastamouse may have caused any genuine offence before backing a called-for ban.

The attempt to stir outrage though becomes increasingly desperate.

Bear in mind this must be the most critical, panicked quote The Star could find from any concerned parent, it quotes one mother saying:

"The thing that I'm most worried about is my daughter knowing/saying words like Rasta."

That's the thing you're most worried about, really? Lucky you.

Elsewhere in Fleet Street one can only imagine how conflicted that other champion of multiculturalism The Daily Mail must be about the whole Rastamouse thing. It's easy to imagine how keen they must be to commission another almost unfathomably witless Gary cartoon showing the final moments of Rastamouse as he struggles in the grips of Downing Street's new mouse catcher 'Larry' the cat, (the message of which would likely be a Daily Mail-style mind fart about the Coalition ending a 'free ride for foreign religions' or taking a stand on the spiritual and recreational use of cannabis.)

But then, the Mail has to leave Rastamouse alone because to ban him on race grounds, of course, would be 'political correctness gone mad' – and that really is the thing they're most worried about.

Feb 15, 2011

A lot of people are quite mean about newspaper columnist Amanda Platell but to be fair to her she has absolutely nailed film-maker Michael Moore with what should be regarded as an absolute textbook example of her wit:

"The rabid anti-capitalist film-maker Michael Moore, director of the global warming propaganda movie Fahrenheit 9/11, is suing his backers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, claiming they cheated him out of £1.67 million in profits. And there was me thinking he did it to save the planet..."

That told him... or at least it would have done, if Fahrenheit 9/11 hadn't actually been about the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York.

But she is right, quibbling about a lousy £1.67m is totally shameful when Moore claims he made the film to "save the planet". Or at least it would be, if he had claimed that he'd only made the film to save the planet and it had been about global warming, rather than the terrorist attacks on New York.

But perhaps the strongest defence of Platell's otherwise watertight argument (all of the above notwithstanding) is that she, unlike money grabbing Michael Moore, is a journalist willing to work for free in order to ensure her message gets 'out there'. Or at least she would be, if she didn't claim a sizeable salary from the Daily Mail in return for such insight and razor wit.

Feb 14, 2011

US television reporter Serene Branson (right) became the subject of much hilarity, swiftly followed by embarrassed backtracking over the past 24 hours after she appeared to badly stumble over her words during live coverage of the Grammy's on CBS.

Copies of the video spread quickly online, shared by people who thought Branson had simply been an unlucky victim of a severe and untimely bout of verbal diarrhea.

Media outlets threw the video up online without hesitation, tagging it "hilarious". But that's when people started to watch and wonder, thinking the apparent meltdown looked a little more serious than a case of fluffed lines. Had anybody actually checked what the problem had been?

Rumours quickly surfaced on Twitter - entirely unconfirmed -that Branson may actually have been taken to hospital after the event.

The Telegraph was among the first to jump on these unconfirmed rumours and reported that Branson had been hospitalised after suffering a potential stroke live on air:

Tellingly, The Telegraph doesn't reveal its source - there's certainly no hospital spokesperson, no representative of CBS, no friends or family. The story was taking on a life of its own as other outlets started hedging their bets and hastily rewriting articles which had linked to or embedded the clip.

But it cannot be stressed enough that everything written about this video so far has been speculation - from those media outlets willing to guess that Branson was "drunk" to those who have subsequently said she suffered a stroke.

Spurred on by a rush to post the latest viral video certain media blundered into a situation where they may have mocked a seriously ill woman. But it is that word "may" which tells us that whatever truth transpires, everybody who has run with any version of this story so far has done so at the expense of having hard facts.

The BBC, Channel 4, ITN and Sky all faced criticism over the weekend for repeatedly showing footage of two horses dying in horrific scenes at Newbury racecourse. Many newspapers and online publishers have also carried still images of the scenes which have divided opinions on the degree to which news outlets should be obliged or entitled to show such images in the name of reporting news.

It seems increasingly likely the two horses were electrocuted in a freak accident while they paraded in the paddock before the first race at the Berkshire course. The unprecedented events resulted in the abandonment of the meeting which was due to be the focus of Channel 4's racing coverage on Saturday, but not before the television cameras in the paddock had captured the events.

Eventually, some news bulletins branded the scenes "too disturbing" to show, but not before a public outcry against the scenes being shown at all had surfaced on Twitter:

What do you think: Is it the role of news broadcasters to show events in the greatest possible detail, irrespective of any offence or upset they may cause, or can a story be fully understood without having to be confronted with scenes that some viewers find disturbing to watch?

The Daily Mail never ceases to surprise with the degree of inconsistency, cowardice and poor taste it can shamelessly bring to almost any story. Take for example its piece today about Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden who tragically suffered the loss of her unborn child a fortnight ago:

Putting aside the mileage every news outlet looks to get from such stories, there would be nothing particularly wrong with the Mail's own reporting of this update from Holden if it hadn't branded the very same "messages offering support and love" as "offensive, narcissistic and trite" in a recent column by Jan Moir:

It is no surprise that Moir would hold or share such unnecessarily spiteful opinions of course - she is after all the columnist who put the boot into Boyzone singer Stephen Gately before the star's funeral had even taken place - but that the Mail would also now attempt to cash in on such a contradictory follow-up shows it really does have no shame.

Moir's article, or the paper's stance on such messages of condolence, are not referenced in this follow-up.

Feb 12, 2011

The Daily Star today took its turn using the now-obligatory 'They Sphinx It's All Over' headline amid its print coverage of President Mubarak's defeat in Egypt. The Sun used the very same headline on 2 February at an earlier stage of the same story:

But this pun hasn't just been a gift to sub editors during the recent revolution in Egypt. Here is an outing it was given way back in 2002, now only discoverable as a result on the search pages of The Sun (again):

And how about this from The Mirror in 2008 (when no element of the forward-looking story was even 'over'):

Or The Sun (again) in 2009 to mark Italy losing to Egypt in a football match:

Don't get me wrong, it's a decent enough pun, but I sphinx it's been a little overused now.

Feb 08, 2011

In other news, I think I just saw a bear disappearing into the woods with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

Of course comments posted on Twitter aren't private. That's kind of the point. But the PCC was forced to rule on this issue after a Department of Transport employee, Sarah Baskerville, complained about news stories in the Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday which had included comments she made on Twitter.

Baskerville's tweets may not have been cut and pasted straight from her 'employee of the year' entry form, including as they did comments about being hungover at work, calling a trainer "mental" and criticising the government for its cuts, but they were hardly jaw-dropping revelations either. In fact they were pretty safe and considered in the grand scheme of much of the chatter on Twitter.

Baskerville subsequently complained to the PCC that the publication of her tweets was a breach of privacy, adding that the comments were meant only for her 700 followers (which may or may not have included random porn-bots, spammers and tabloid journalists, such is the open nature of Twitter).

She'd have had more luck claiming night was day.

But what is clear from this case is that while Twitter may be public and therefore anything said should of course be considered 'on the record', that doesn't mean it's always newsworthy or in the public interest (even once the Mail has distorted comments to make them sound far more interesting or inflammatory than they really are).

After all:

- Woman doesn't like government cuts: Shocker!

- Exclusive: Office worker starts day with hangover

- 'My figure of speech hell': Person branded "mental" wasn't really!

These are not news stories.

What Baskerville fell victim to wasn't an invasion of privacy, it was lazy journalism.

Perhaps if she had been a Minister within the Department - or even a D-list celebrity trying to shoehorn themselves into a story, any story - then her on-the-record comments might have warranted a minor news item, but she wasn't.

The PCC - not the most effective organisation at the best of times - was put in a tricky position however, given this ruling would set a precedent. It's only option was to rule that of course comments on unprotected Twitter accounts should be considered public domain. But that shouldn't absent newspapers from a responsible approach to newsgathering and the stories they run.

It looks like David Cameron's letter to Jim'll Fix It has finally been answered. The Prime Minister today got to meet David Hasselhoff and the moment has been captured by Paul Waugh over at PoliticsHome.com (who very kindly states that others may use his pic with credit - thanks Paul!)

Now call us predictable but this has got caption competition written all over it. It would almost be rude not to given the obvious "how could this backfire" look on Cameron's face.

So submit your suggestions as a reader comment below, with your name and email address and the best one, decided by us on Friday, will win ...er... a copy of 'Making Waves: The Autobiography' by David Hasselhoff. (Just mark your suggestions: 'Please don't send me the prize if I win' should you not want to receive it*).

(*There is no cash equivalent, or alternative prize, the judge's decision is final. Any comments which could land us in court will be ignored... other than that, have fun.)

It draws the eye, as any good headline should and much as I hate to lazily slip into the whole 'let's laugh at foreign places with funny names' routine I can't help thinking the sub-editor could quite nimbly have backed out of this tricky corner, if they really wanted to:

What are they putting in the coffee over at the Morning Bulletin? It is now our favourite international newspaper.